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Shameless

Submitted by James on Wed, 12/26/2012 - 10:27

It's no secret that the Republican party in North Carolina is fundamentally racist and misogynist. This inescapable conclusion can be drawn not by looking into their hearts and minds, but by examining their actions and choices. Christianists like Skip Stam and Phil Berger have spent their political careers trying to subvert the rights of black people and women to receive equal treatment before the law.

For women, the story is well-documented. The poor little creatures don't have enough sense to understand their own bodies, much less make decisions about their own health. That's why they need Daddy Doctor probing their vaginas with an invasive, unnecessary, and costly medical procedure.

For blacks and browns, the picture is equally dire. Indy Week summarized the perversion that is Republican "justice" a little over a year ago.

Led by House Majority Leader Paul "Skip" Stam, a Republican from Apex, conservative legislators have been working since the beginning of the year to repeal the law, which allows convicts on death row to appeal their sentences on the grounds their verdict or death sentence was influenced by racial bias.

A North Carolina trial judge recently resentenced three death-row inmates to life without parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act, which allows inmates to have their sentences reduced it can be shown they were tainted by racial bias. In the trials of two blacks and one Lumbee Indian, the judge found “powerful evidence”of such bias.

The law does not require proof that the bias was deliberate. But, in this case, the judge found “intentional” prosecutorial bias aimed at securing a death sentence for the defendants, bringing grave “harm to African-Americans and to the integrity of the justice system.”

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The judge observed that the injustice abundantly proven in each case was common throughout North Carolina during the past two decades. Prosecutors excluded blacks from juries for going to church too often or for other reasons that “simply make no sense” and that could be explained only by intentional and ugly bias.

Simply make no sense. What a fitting epitaph for the reckless behavior of Republicans running the show in Raleigh today.

If you happen to be a wealthy white man who is well-connected to GOP-favored special interests, you and your privileged children will have nothing to fear from the coming Republican reign of terror in North Carolina. If, on the other hand, you happen to be black, brown, poor, gay, female, disabled, or mentally ill, you will be well and truly screwed by Governor Pope and his Multimillion Opinion Manufacturing Machine.

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